elve months, and you repeated this offer to me in these precise
terms on the 11th of March last.

"This offer was friendly. I accepted it with gratitude, and in full
confidence that you would punctually perform what you had thus freely
promised. I accordingly made this offer known to the Minister, and
solicited his consent. On the 15th day of March he authorised the
Ambassador of France to inform me, that you might advance me from
forty to fifty thousand current dollars on those terms. The
Ambassador signified this to me by letter, and that letter was
immediately laid before you. Then, Sir, for the first time, did you
insist on being repaid in four months, and that in four equal monthly
payments, secured by orders on the rents of the post-office, or on the
general treasury, &c. &c. These terms and conditions were all new, and
never hinted to me in the most distant manner until after the Minister
had agreed to your first offer, and until the very moment when the
holders of the bills were demanding their money, and insisting that
the bills should either be paid or protested.

"The Minister rejected these new conditions, and you refused to abide
by the former ones. The bills were then due. I had no time even to
look out for other resources, and thereby was reduced to the necessity
of protesting them.

"Such conduct, Sir, can have no pretensions to gratitude, and affords
a much more proper subject for apology than for approbation. I confess
that I was no less surprised than disappointed, and still remain
incapable of reconciling these deviations from the rules of fair
dealing, with that open and manly temper which you appear to possess,
and which I thought would insure good faith to all who relied on your
word.

"How far your means might have failed, how far you might have been
ill-advised, or ill-informed, or unduly influenced, are questions,
which, though not uninteresting to you, are now of little importance
to me.

"I acknowledge with pleasure, that until these late singular
transactions I had reason to believe you were well attached to the
interests of my country, and I present you my thanks for having on
several former occasions endeavored to promote it.

"I am, &c. &c.

JOHN JAY."

As M. Cabarrus was concerned in contracts with government for money,
and was the projector of several of their ways and means for supplying
the Royal Treasury, it app